Menu

Sadhguru

“If you have conclusions about everything, there is no possibility, no receptivity. If you have conclusions, you do not have to be attentive — you can go through life like you are dead. The more conclusions you have, the more rigor mortis there is in your mind and in your body as well.”

~Sadhguru

There is a certain geometry to the physical existence and to the energy existence. Everything in the universe, from the atomic to the cosmic, works the way it does because of geometric perfection. One of the most fundamental and the most stable forms in geometry is a triangle. In the human energy system, there are two equilateral triangles — an upward-pointing one below, and a downward-pointing one above. Normally, these two triangles meet just above the anahata. To work with your mind and imagination, it is important to adjust the alignment of the two triangles at least to some extent. The ideal alignment would be that the upward-pointing and the downward-pointing triangles intersect to such an extent that they form a perfect six-pointed star with six equilateral triangles on the outside.

With the necessary alignment, you will be able to exercise your imagination in such a way that you can manifest what you want outside of you. To enhance the power of your imagination, you need to lift the upward-pointing triangle, which in terms of the geometry of the body is the foundation, to such an extent that it includes the vishuddhi, which is the basis of your imagination. There is sadhana to move it up and hold it there, all the time. If you do not have such sadhana, a simple way to achieve this is not to eat for a period of time. Generally, when the stomach is empty, the upward-pointing triangle tends to rise by itself. Once you eat, it descends again.

The Importance of Keeping the Chakras Mobile

There are one hundred and fourteen chakras in the body. The seventy-two thousand nadis, or energy pathways in the system, have one hundred and fourteen significant junction points, where the nadis meet in substantial numbers and redistribute themselves. These points are generally known as chakras, which literally means “wheel” or “circle,” though they are actually triangles. We call them “chakras” because that suggests movement — moving forward. Out of these hundred and fourteen, two are outside of the physical realm. For most human beings, these two are very feeble, unless they put in the necessary sadhana. Out of the remaining one hundred and twelve chakras, a few are generally located in certain parts of the body, on a physiological level. The rest of the chakras could be moving to some extent.

The way the chakras move depends on what you do with yourself. If you want to empower yourself to do different types of activities and to adjust to different type of situations, the pranic physiology or the chakra physiology of the body needs to be able to adjust accordingly. Doing the necessary work to keep the chakras mobile is important because the mobility of the chakras determines how flexible and effective you are in different types of situations, in order to meet different types of requirements. The problem with most human beings is in one situation, they function well. In another situation, they are a total mess. This is because they can only think, feel and act in a particular way.

You should be able to do everything well, with a little practice. But this will not work if your energy system is rigid. So, keeping your system mobile is important, not just because we want to do different kinds of activities in the world. It also gives you a certain flexibility of experience, that you are comfortable in any kind of situation. To be at ease, your energies must be flexible. These hundred and twelve chakras can be used as hundred and twelve doorways to your ultimate nature. That is why Adiyogi gave one hundred and twelve ways to attain to the ultimate.

To be able to move this complex triangular structure of your physiology the way you want it requires a different level of sadhana. But the most fundamental thing is that these two triangles should intersect. Normally, the upward-pointing triangle is below and the downward-pointing triangle is above. If you bring the two equilateral triangles to a point where they intersect in such a way that they form a star with six equilateral triangles, the system is in balance and becomes very receptive. My work is about presence and transmitting something, for which you need receptivity. My words are not going to enlighten you. I only say things to confuse you, because you cannot enlighten anyone by talking. It is the presence that has the power to transform.

From Conclusions to Confusion to Consciousness

Talking is a good tool only to destroy the idiotic conclusions that people have made. When conclusions are destroyed, confusion happens. Being joyfully confused about everything in the universe is a good state to be in. This means you are constantly paying attention to everything. Once you realize that you do not know a thing, you become receptive. If you have conclusions about everything, there is no possibility, no receptivity. If you have conclusions, you do not have to be attentive — you can go through life like you are dead. The more conclusions you have, the more rigor mortis there is in your mind and in your body as well.

“Being joyfully confused about everything in the universe is a good state to be in. This means you are constantly paying attention to everything. Once you realize that you do not know a thing, you become receptive.”

If you are doing hatha yoga every day, you will notice that on a day when your attitude is kind of rigid, your body will not bend. On another day, when you are happy and mentally flexible, your body will bend much better. The nature of your consciousness is manifesting in every cell of your body, every moment of your life. That is why there are many kinds of self-inflicted diseases in the world today. Never before, human beings had as many food choices as we have today. In earlier times, people ate what was locally available. Today, in spite of so much variety, there is so much illness. In fact, the more choices people have, the sicker they get.

The United States is probably one of the countries with the greatest variety of food choices, but they also spend a huge amount of money on healthcare — three trillion dollars per year. That is a crime against humanity. If those who do not get sufficient nourishment are ill, it is understandable. But if those who are eating well are sick, it means something fundamental is going wrong. We have not understood that every cell in your body was created by the nature of your consciousness. If you do not know how to keep the nature of your consciousness well, you will not know how to keep your system well. Then you will function by accident, which need not be so.

We as human beings do everything that other creatures do too — we eat, sleep, reproduce, and die. One thing that distinguishes us is we are making a lot of fuss about all that, just as an aside. The most important difference about human beings is we can do all these things fully consciously. For example, you can eat fully consciously. Let us say you are hungry. If you were some other creature, you would just pick up whatever suits you and devour it. But as a human being, you are able to wait until mealtime, sit at the table, chant the invocation, and rather than stuffing your face with both hands, eat with your right hand. This is being conscious. If you go by the body alone, you will want to eat immediately. But since you have the necessary intelligence and awareness to hold back the compulsions of the body, you can respond to the situation in a conscious manner. If someone behaves very compulsively, they say he is like an animal. So, this is a journey from compulsiveness to consciousness.

Consciousness gives you the possibility to become free from your tendencies. Even if you have been ruled by all kinds of tendencies until this moment, if you respond fully consciously now, there will be a distance between you and the accumulated tendencies that you have. If you make every aspect of life conscious — not only in action, but also in thought, emotion, and energy — you will be on top of the world.

“The word kundalini generally refers to that dimension of energy, which is yet to realize its potential. There is a huge volume of energy within you which is yet to find its potential. It is just there waiting, because what you call as a human being is still in the making.”

~Sadhguru

Yogi and mystic, Sadhguru, looks at the enormous potential that Kundalini carries. He speaks of the importance of becoming aware of the Kundalini, awakening to a hidden treasure within.

The word “kundalini” generally refers to that dimension of energy that is yet to realize its potential. There is a huge volume of energy within you that is yet to find its potential. It is just there waiting, because what you call a human being is still in the making. You are not yet a human being, you are a “human becoming.” You are not an absolute entity of being human. There is constant scope to make yourself into a better human being.

Once you become human, there is no more unconscious evolution. If you are unconscious, the same endless cycle of the same nonsense will go on and on. Evolution will come to you only if you seek it consciously.

If you become conscious, evolution – or any change – cannot happen without the necessary energy. So, the process of evolution allowed a huge volume of energy untapped, that if you become conscious, you could use this to make something fantastic out of it. It is a treasure on which you are sitting. But if you are looking in the wrong direction, you will never know that there is a treasure.

Kundalini: Sitting on a Jackpot

It happened once. There was a beggar who lived in terrible poverty. He just sat under a tree and begged. People threw a few coins, and he just lived on. One day he died and his body was just lying there. He had no friends or relatives, and nobody wanted to carry him somewhere and bury him. So they decided to just bury him right there under the tree. As people began digging, they hit upon a huge treasure. Just a few feet beneath him there had been a huge treasure, a huge pot full of gold, and the fool was sitting right there all his life, begging. If only he had dug down, he would have been a very rich man. But he sat there all the time being a beggar.

This is the way of the Kundalini. It is sitting right there. Everyone is sitting on a jackpot, but they are all looking in other directions. They are not looking where the treasure is. So they never realize something like this is there. Kundalini is that treasure within you which has been left unused, untapped. You could use that energy to transform this into a completely different dimension altogether; a dimension that you cannot imagine.

Kundalini: Plug into the Ultimate Source

Let me take you from your own experience of life because the stories about Kundalini are many. In your house, there is a plug-point in the wall. This plug-point does not actually produce any power. There is a huge power station elsewhere that is producing power, but it cannot give you that power directly. It is the plug-point that gives you access. Though most people have not even thought about the power station and have no concept of what it is, they know that if they plug an appliance into the plug-point, the appliance will run.

Similarly, there is a “plug-point” within the human body. It is not a 3-pin point, it is a 5-pin point. You might have heard of the seven chakras. The muladhara is like a 5-plug point. That is why it is known as muladhara. Muladhara means “fundamental” or “basic.” Five of the remaining six chakras are the plug. What is the seventh chakra, known as the sahasrar? It is like a light bulb. If you plug it in, everything about you glows. If you are properly plugged in, keeping the lights on 24 hours of the day is not an issue anymore. You don’t have to turn off your power because you are worried the battery might run out. You can just keep it on blatantly, recklessly, because you are plugged into the power source.

Even right now, you still have energy. You can read what is written. That means life energies are functioning, but in a very miniscule way. Just a small part of it is functioning. If the whole of it becomes available to you, if it is properly plugged in, there is no limit to what you can do out of it. Even with the plug-point at home, once you are plugged in, you can make light happen, you can get the air-conditioning going, you can have the heater, you can have the television – anything you want. Just one power point. You can do so many things.

Unfortunately, most human beings are not plugged in. They are trying to generate their own power. So they eat five times a day, but still they are tired most of the time. It is a struggle to keep life going. Energy is not just in terms of physical energy or activity, energy is in terms of life. Existence is energy, isn’t it? The basis of existence is energy. If you know that basis, it is like knowing the foundations of life. If you understand the ways of the energy, you know the whole mechanics of creation. So if you are plugged in, you know what the power is, what it can do and what you can make out of it. You are plugged into an endless source of power – that is what is Kundalini.

How Do You Plug Into Kundalini?

To plug in an appliance, if your hands are shaky, you will scratch the whole wall but you will not get the plug in. In the same way, to put the 5-point plug into the plug-point is difficult for a lot of people because there is no steadiness in their body, their mind, their emotions or their energies. Yoga is a means to get the necessary steadiness so that you can plug it in. Once you plug it in – boundless energy! You don’t have to go and learn about or understand the power station. You plug it in and everything is fine.

Yoga is the science of getting the plug properly in so that there is an uninterrupted source of power. Once you are connected to this uninterrupted source of power, naturally you will proceed towards the goal of what life is longing for. You will not get lost with your fancy ideas, dreams, thoughts, emotions or entanglements of the world.

The Organic Atom

A human being is an “organic atom”, an individual unit of life. For example, today, human beings are exploring atomic science. An atom is not even visible to you, but if you smash it, something tremendous happens. And if you are in the way, something terrible will happen. No one ever realized that there could be so much energy packed into this tiny, little atom until they broke it. Similarly, there is a tremendous amount of energy packed into a human being. The Kundalini awakening or rising means you have found the technology of tapping into that energy.

However, if you tap into this dimension of energy, which is a phenomenal force, you must be on stable ground. This is just like learning to operate nuclear energy. Nowadays, everyone is learning a lot about atomic science because of the Japanese situation! If you have forgotten the Russian experience, the Japanese are reminding you. If you tap into this energy, you must tap into it with extreme caution. If you are not in the right kind of situations, if you are in the way of a tsunami or an earthquake, you could be asking for trouble. It is the same thing with the Kundalini.

Don’t Build a “Kundalini” Bomb!

With the kind of lives that most people live, where there are too many things – people, food or activity – that are not in absolute control, trying to activate the Kundalini because you read a book somewhere is like starting to build a nuclear reactor in your home because you read how to do it on the internet. Apparently, until 2006, there was a detailed plan about how to build a nuclear bomb available on the internet! We don’t know how many people have downloaded it. The only fortune is they have no access to the material that is needed. With Kundalini too, there are too many people who have read about how, with the Kundalini awakening, you can do all sorts of miraculous things. But though they may intellectually know what to do, experientially they don’t. And that’s a good thing because if they crack this energy open and they cannot contain it, it can destroy your whole system in no time. Not just you, people around you could be hugely harmed too. So is Kundalini a bad thing? No. It is a tremendous thing but anything which is tremendous has to be conducted in utmost care and caution.

How Else Do You Activate Kundalini?

So is there something else that one can do? Every aspect of yoga in some way activates Kundalini. In fact, everything that you do, if you go and jump for 10 minutes or play football, will activate your Kundalini to some extent. In moments of absolute involvement in a game, people show a phenomenal sense of energy, which is not possible for them in normal situations. This is because the Kundalini gets activated in intense activity. But consciously trying to crack it open and use it is a different business. That has to be done under absolute control and guidance.